SEO Egghead Consulting Group

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Excerpt: RSnake of ha.ckers.org documents in this post how to conveniently obtain all the subdomains of a domain using a search engine.  This can help you isolate some spammers.  He later says " … wouldn’t it be nice if we could somehow get access to all the IP address to hostname maps?"  I agree, and here is a partial solution to that request leveraging a search engine — this time MSN Search.  Use the "IP" command to find all hosts located on a certain IP address like follows:IP:xxx.xxx.xxx.1You can join them to locate all hosts located on a range of…

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Excerpt: Matt Cutts has a blog filled with lots of good stuff, and lots of boring stuff.  Even some of the SEO stuff is mundane and basic, so I decided I'd filter it out and enumerate the gems from his new videos.  Unfortunately, though Matt's videos are super cool and employ totally cool special effects and props, they are sadly not indexable.  This should help, and covers everything up to "Vidyo" on August 1, 2006.  Here they are:Note: My opinions are in italics to indicate where I'm expressing an opinion, not citing Matt. 1. Matt Cutts thinks link bait…

This is just a friendly reminder that once a month I'll be dissecting the architecture of 1-2 sites that readers submit and doing a formal report.  It's free as long as you don't mind me posting the report.  I'll be picking the site at the end of this week.  Click here for the details.

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Excerpt: Matt Cutts reaffirmed his distaste for cloaking in his most recent videos over here.  However, I still fail to see a problem with cloaking used ethically, and every time I think of an ethical use I post it on this blog.Chris Boggs posts here that he implemented load-balancing for a web site via round-robin DNS.  The problem is that this solution yields the same problem as mirroring a site.  And if you think about it, it's basically the same thing — except that the mirror selected is random.  Typically, instead of a user clicking a link to get to the…

Most deployed versions of Apache are potentially exploitable, as mod_rewrite has been found to be vulnerable to a stack smashing attack.  It is somewhat muted by the fact that only certain rules cause the problem.  The vulnerability is caused by an off-by-one error — the most common programming error known to man.  Many SEOs use mod_rewrite, but not all will be affected; I checked my rules, and I am not exploitable (otherwise I wouldn't post this), but I'm upgrading anything I have anyway.  This affects all branches of Apache  — 1.3 to 2.2.  The original report from McAfee is here.

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Excerpt: Once a month, starting this coming month, I will be doing a free SEO site clinic.  Here's how it will work: Leave a comment with your site's URL and specific concerns you may have.After a week, I will pick 1-2 sites in the list and do a public post on what my recommendations are for those sites.  There are a few things to note in that regard: 0. For those who have attended SES site clinics, this should be familiar.1. If you're doing anything blatantly black hat, I probably won't do the review.  I don't want to call anything out that could…

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Excerpt: A major copywriting concern becomes manifest when one realizes that many popular queries happen to be English, but they are just plain awkward constructions.For example, when a user is looking for a "Vioxx attorney," one must consider whether this phrase is actually English. The answer is yes — and no. Ask yourself a simple question:"Would I actually call up a law firm and say: 'Hello, do you have a Vioxx attorney?'"Maybe.  But I'd be more likely to phrase the question as follows: "Hello, do you have attorneys who handle Vioxx?"(BORING ENGLISH GRAMMARIAN RANT)English is a mixed-up language.  Many of the…

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Excerpt: Syndication isn't only for blogs; it can be used for any type of site with any sort of infomation. Blogs typically already include robust feed support (including both RSS & Atom), but what about if you want to create a feed for a site that isn't a blog? Easy — use the below class to do it. So what does this have to do with SEO? Feeds are effective vehicles to disseminate information. Your site can release information via a feed, usually abbreviated, then include a link to the full content. This will, over…